I worry that MBAs of other companies will take the lessons learned from Silicon Valley WFH and misapply them.<p>Silicon Valley has high salaries and very long commute times. But how does this apply to medium sized cities with low commute times and lower salaries?<p>How much more productive will employees be if they don’t have a dedicated office and if their commute time was like 15 minutes instead of the 2 hours someone from Silicon Valley may spend?<p>How productive is it for workers who have to work from home in their bedroom?<p>I’ve noticed this split in opinion from higher ups who have higher pay and thus have large, finished home offices versus others lower on the totem pole who don’t.<p>Also, I think WFH tends to isolate and stovepipe employees even more than they already were, which is a problem especially in larger organizations.<p>And the odds of fortuitous interactions drops dramatically while the latency for some red tape processes increases as well, since you have to fight an email chain with people with more and more disparate work schedules (and less tacit knowledge transfer and trust-building).<p>I think the narrative of WFH success is in many ways driven by the people for which WFH is a godsend due to really long commute times or having poor office workplaces (like open plan) and who either function well with very little guidance or who don’t but dislike the guidance.<p>But it’s potentially a lot cheaper up front not to have offices, just like open plan offices were cheaper, so I fear MBAs may discount these drawbacks and make WFH the default in many, many places where it’s a bad idea.<p>(Still a huge fan of having the option of WFH, but there have been massive productivity losses in my workplace from strict WFH requirements... in part because we do a mix of fundamentally physical lab work, not just sitting in front of a computer.)
I like working from home because I don't have to pretend I'm working all day. Like most of my work is thinking I can do that anywhere so working from home means I can have a little walk, sit on the balcony and not have anal retentive managers looking over my shoulder demanding I look busy. Likewise when I'm waiting for work/someone to decide I can turn on Netflix and relax, most of my work I can do in 2 or 3 hours a day, its seldom I have enough to be fully engaged for a day.<p>Work from home is attractive because the alternative is so awful, I watch old movies from the 50's and everyone had an office sat back with their feet on the desk while thinking, also long commutes weren't a huge thing - everyone caught the bus, long lunches were a thing, granted hours were long then but things haven't improved. The modern workplace is a toxic environment, working from home is a little better but really its pretty awful to - no socialising, no energy etc.
I won't go back without a vaccine.<p>The easing of bans without a vaccine is dumb. Once you have the vaccine, then you're free to go back to normal.<p>Without it, nothing has really changed.<p>Government policy around restrictions has been stupid since the beginning. It makes sense for companies to protect employees and wait for the vaccine - <i>especially</i> now that it's so close.<p>In California the vaccine is still restricted, but hopefully we'll get wide availability by the end of April. I've see lots of people on Twitter get it with nebulous pre-existing conditions. I wonder how many people are just lying.
> A survey late last year of 9,000 knowledge workers commissioned by workplace chat software company Slack found 20% want to work remotely, 17% in the office and 63% a mix of the two.<p>That's pretty much where I'm at. I like the idea of hopping into the office maybe once or twice a week to interact with my co-workers, but otherwise I'm extremely productive at home especially without having to endure the 1-2 hours commute.<p>I joined a company last last year and they moved to this hybrid model once they found there was practically no efficiency loss with respect to moving everyone to remote. But some people still missed going into the office so they re-opened their physical offices albeit at limited capacity.
Been doing a few interviews recently and the narrative I’m hearing is different. Most companies want to go back to the office because of “company culture”, and are very happy I’m still in the Bay Area. Personally I miss going to the office and seeing my coworkers and friends in person. If WFH works for you that’s fine, but it’s not for everyone.
Is that surprising? There is little value in taking on the risk of infection (and resulting bad PR and work disruption) given that you can maintain your operations with remote workers ... especially given the fact that if you wait just a few more months, your staff will be vaccinated.<p>> Box Inc said its reopening is still scheduled for September.<p>That's probably the most reasonable timeline for tech workers. And even then, we'll probably see tepid support for that. Things aren't going to go back to normal in 2021.
Tech workers seem to agree: permanent work from office isn't what most of us want. Fair enough.<p>But here's a fun question: If you aren't permanently in the office, do you need a personal, permanent <i>desk</i> in the office? Because that is going to be the first cut that comes when we all "go back, some of the time". And half the people I pose this question to get upset about it.<p>My own prediction is that teams are going to book sets of desks together the same way we book meeting rooms. They're shared and you'd better have a reservation.<p>But "your" desk with your photo of the spouse and kids, your knick-knacks, your notebooks and "your" monitor? I doubt you'll ever have that again.
I fear that while COVID lockdowns have proven that we can wfh just fine, the trauma of experiencing wfh during a pandemic has poisoned the well and the popular meme (at least in the US) is not all about socializing and “culture”.<p>Working from in the pandemic is simply not the same as doing so voluntarily with a good setup and proper social circle. Hell, even remote first companies get together in person periodically. The framing of WFH as all or nothing forever is toxic and not true.<p>I personally want flexibility. There is little point for me to spend days in the office running from one conf room to another in 30 min increments, often taking up space that could be used for 5-6 people just by myself because I’m coordinating with another office a lot. On days like that my home standing desk is fine and more efficient. When we need to brainstorm and whiteboard, sure office is fine.
Comments here seem to be missing the point. "Reopening" just means allowing people to come back to the office if they want to, but the cat is out of the bag and there is never going to be a practical way to force everyone to come back to the office. The biggest upshot of the pandemic for me personally is I was able to go work for a Silicon Valley company, except I live in Texas. And I'm not moving. I made it clear to anyone who ever tried to hire me that relocation is not an option. These companies took advantage to open up their nets to the entire country if not the world. They can't make their actual remote workers move, so there is no fair way to force the people who live nearby to come back. If some people get to work from home, you have to give everyone the option or they're going to revolt.<p>If they want to put an office near me, I'm glad to show up every now and again. But I'm sure as shit not moving to San Francisco.<p>Companies have to weigh the tradeoffs between whatever benefit you get from people being physically together when they're working versus the benefit you get from being able to hire anyone and not just people who either live within X miles or who are under 25 with no house and no family and will gladly move across the country for you without you needing to pay them seven figures for it.
I know of a couple SV startups that went from <100 employees to a couple hundred during the pandemic. Which means that these companies are now essentially distributed across the country and the employees have mostly never met each other in person. I can’t imagine these companies forcing their new workforce to move to SV so they are almost forced to be fully remote going forward.<p>As an aside, I kind of really like working in central time for a company operating in pacific time. Works well for my sleep schedule and gives me a couple hours of pure productivity in the morning before the rest of the company “wakes up.”
As much as I love remote work, part of me wonders how much of this is a temporary effect. Yes, we can take a functional in-person organization and transition it to remote. But now as time marches on and that organization needs to change and grow and learn, will that be as effective remote as it is in-person?
Companies that require employees to work from home, should pay them extra compensation for use of their property as their office. Probably they should be paying a comparable market rate to what would be the cost of renting an office space for that employee on the market.
I get that many employees find it very cool that they can WFH and just that fact makes them happy, but they forgetting that this way companies exploit them.
You are essentially sacrificing part of your home for the company you work for and you don't ask to be compensated for that?
Almost everyone I know has been working 20-30% more than usual in the last year, are available basically at any/all times (and weekends), and getting the same salary. Plus, we're paying for the electricity of our work laptops now, and fridge, microwave oven, etc. Plus, no more paying for expensive company trips and meetings in expensive hotels. The fact that you can hire basically anyone, anywhere, means more competition and more pressure on the employee to work more and expect less from the employer.<p>Why the hell would they open up again?
I would never work in an office again. The one good thing about covid is that it definitely transitioned us away from and industrial revolution model to the Information Age.
I'd be happy to work in a hub-coworking-office close to home. A joint kitchen area so I can socialize with people, and a small sound-proofed room for everyone to work on their own stuff. No point in everyone travelling to the same large building to work.
How do they expect us to have 8 hours of back to back Zoom meetings in an office on top of getting actual work done? There's no way people are doing that on top of commuting.
I'm really curious to see how this plays out, especially for larger Bay Area companies.<p>Every worker has their own preference about where they work best. If you don't allow remote work, how do you weigh the risk of losing good employees who don't want to return to the office? If you go remote-first, what about employees who really value the office? If you try to do a mix, how do you do it well? And there are other effects to think about, like on costs, company culture, and productivity.<p>As time passes after COVID is no longer a large risk
(which isn't guaranteed), I think we'll see tolerance for remote work decay at large companies. As fewer other companies offer flexibility for remote, the office will return across the board as the default.<p>I think the lasting change will be an increase in flexibility, though, like allowing WFH N days/week and more frequent exemptions for some employees to work fully remote. A few companies will recommit 100% to the office and a few will allow greater remote work, but the majority of employees at medium/large companies will again spend the majority of their time at the office.
My biggest question is WRT to the tax subsidies that were given to companies like Twitter in SF, as well as Google (likely all over, but was thinking about the NYC building)<p>So - they were given subsidies to build/occupy there such that the claim was that it would stimulate and heighten the surround area and businesses...<p>So if Twitter is 100% WFH option, then why give them massive subsidies when their well paid employee population is no longer present on-site?<p>However, they may have already expired?<p><a href="https://time.com/14335/twitter-tax-break-san-francisco/" rel="nofollow">https://time.com/14335/twitter-tax-break-san-francisco/</a>
My company’s campus very large, and the RTW plan involves a slow, phased rollout.<p>My assumption is that one important driver has been the company’s legal team. Imagine the potential workers comp claims if there are covid flareups directly traceable to your jobsite.
Would the mixed/hybrid model include hoteling? If not, what's the advantage to the company if they still have to provide a reserved office/cubicle/workstation space for each employee? One of the big arguments in favor of allowing remote work is that is saves the employer on facilities. While there are other benefits, mostly in terms of morale, the bean counters who have a lot of control over this aren't going to be happy if they have to both provide office facilities and support for remote work to the same person.
Probably because their employees can afford to bring lawsuits against their employers should they catch preventable COVID infections at work, or spread it to loved ones.
Huh, the companies in one of the highest cost-of-living (and thus highest cost-of-labor) places in the country, want to keep with the remote-only thing a while longer? Interesting. I'm sure this is nothing to do with "maybe we could take advantage of this to relocate a lot of our jobs to cheaper places". It's probably just "being safe". Because that's what motivates top executive thinking at large corporations.
One of the benefits of wfh is that we now do not work on the corporate network anymore. Since we have discovered code together features pairing is so amazing. You get to work together on the same problem. Not needing to sync over git, one person can work on the large line and instead of calling out small things to fix the other can just in place fix them. It is amazing.
I started the current job during pandemic. I had never been to office of current. Zoom interview and WFH until now. Kids are also schooling from home. Hence, I now have three office set ups in home. One for me and two for kids in 3700 sqft home.<p>At least for me, I don't want to spend 2 hours commuting.<p>Since, the job pays well, I will go to office if asked for it.
Are they still "Silicon Valley firms" when the employees are spread out around the country, and world, or can we finally retire this tedious, self-perpetuating myth of the elite workers of the golden coasts of California and New York, doing incredible and smart things the rest of the world can scarcely understand?<p>Good riddance to the Valley. Maybe having everyone go home will create an actual diversity of opinions, not the myopic progressive echo chambers that give rise to one Facebook after another - keep up the stock value, society be damned, but make sure no one gets offended in the process.
Given adequate and safe public transportation I’d love going into an office.<p>Yet imho that exists nowhere in the US. Companies might as well provide a car to commute in